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Monday, 8 October 2012

Colour Challenge 41 - Antique Brass

¦¦ The Ghostly Librarian ¦¦

When I saw the colour I was really hopeful that my Steampunk Fox avatar would work but alas, there was not a shade in common. Then in checking for 'tan' I found this Victorian style bustle dress which I used last year to put together an avatar. So in keeping with the season, when SL is gearing up for Halloween with such a vengeance it will all be old news by the time the 31st rolls around, my avatar for this week's colour is Undead. I always felt that she was a librarian; something about the glasses perhaps; and the similarity to the ghost librarian in Ghostbusters, though she's a much gentler kind of spirit. As I was gnashing my teeth over having to join the Harry Potter RP community in order to sneak into Hogwarts, a friend introduced me to this place instead. I just love the light and colour tones in this beautiful old library and I think it's the sort of place time slows naturally for absorbed readers. Easy for my ghost to forget that she is dead, she has just slipped into a timeless reverie where she can read and work on her own manuscript (the unfinished business holding her to this realm), barely disturbed.

The observant among you will note that for a ghost, my librarian is a little on the solid side. That is because I am a fan of the TV show Supernatural and their ghosts are not always obvious at first sight. Indeed one early episode had them helping a ghost who looked, to the viewer, like a living woman, and the plot revelation was very much in Sixth Sense style. There is no logical reason why a ghost should look obviously ghostly, at first glance, other than the fact it's 'traditional'.

You can demonstrate ghostliness in many other ways - as you can see from my close-up, I'm hardly a picture postcard for the bloom of health, not to mention the very obvious throat wound; and I glide around the library noiselessly, drifting through furniture and (literally) in and out of the book-stacks. Like all ghosts, I fade in and out of temporal reality with a static flicker (there's a joke here somewhere about crashing and bakefail...) but these phenomena are not easily captured on camera.

My reading glasses are the item which allow my ghost to manifest - every ghost needs some physical remains or important personal object to tie them to the scene of their haunting. My body was taken away by the police and eventually buried, but the glasses came off during my death struggle and were knocked behind a bookshelf, and overlooked. Later I managed to move them to a more secure hiding place where they now rest, covered in dust and spider webs. I was killed while tidying the stacks, my murderer coming up behind me and slitting my throat. My greatest emotion at the time was not fear for my own life, but outrage at the blood spattering over the book I was holding. I don't even know the reason I was killed, and don't very much care; my all consuming purpose is to finish the book I was attempting to write. Being dead actually gives me more time and solitude to accomplish this task.

As the library is updated over the decades with new books, it provides invaluable research material for my work, so really I am quite content here and try not to disturb the living visitors; providing they respect the rules of the library themselves. The librarians are vaguely aware of me and tolerate my presence. They enjoy telling new staff the rumour of my existence and find a gently malicious amusement in the manner in which I terrorise noisy visitors, forcing them to leave.

Here I am walking through one of the heavy reading tables as I hush some transgressor of the peace. If they do not heed my polite reminder, I thrust my face into theirs and roll my eyes, enveloping them in a deadly chill as I attempt to wrest away whatever book they are reading with my bony fingers. It invariably produces the desired result.

And here I am working on my manuscript, at one of the old typewriters. I type at night, so as not to disturb anyone, and hide the finished pages with my glasses. I am glad that this library prides itself on its old fashioned atmosphere; I have read about these newfangled 'computers' and I must say I do not ever wish to encounter one. They sound most alien and frightening. Do read the motivational inscription on the wall behind me. It is a most apt expression!What am I working on, you ask? That secret will have to wait until I can find a publisher willing to work with the Undead...

hahaha this is so super Fledge..can't you become the new J.K Rowling???? super pictures too!!! love it all))) i sure will go and have a look in that library.. hope to find your character there or her glasses